Windows 7: Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Download a Taste

A preview of Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 is now available for download from Mozilla, allowing early adopters to get a taste of the development milestone.

Now, in all fairness, Mozilla is not quite there yet, but the browser vendor is certainly pushing Firefox 4.0 closer and closer to the fourth Beta development milestone.

In this regard, the next Beta Build of Firefox 4.0 is currently set for next Monday, namely August 23rd, 2010.

Still, as was the case with previous Beta releases of Firefox 4.0, nothing is set in stone. Provided that everything will go well, Firefox 4.0 will drop at the start of the coming week.

However, testers need to remember the recent case of Firefox 4.0 Beta 3, which was delayed for several days because of blockers associated with the Sync feature.

At this point in time, Mozilla is serving the Candidate Build of Firefox 4.0 Beta 4, through its FTP servers.

And while this is still very much a nightly build of the browser, it is closer to the actual Beta than the most recent nightly releases which introduced Tab Sets, the feature previously referred to as Tab Candy.

Tab Candy/Tab Sets is now one of the features that have been confirmed for Firefox 4.0, along with silent updates for Windows users and the new graphical user interface.

I have seen questions related to the next stage in the development process of Firefox 4.0 beyond Beta 4. And yes, there will be a Firefox 4.0 Beta 5.

Here is what Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Mike Beltzner had to say after the release of Firefox 34.0 Beta 3:

“Over the next two planned beta releases we expect to add more web-developer and user-facing features to Firefox 4, at which point we’ll hit what we call “feature freeze”,” Beltzner noted.

“After that point, we will spend all of our time fixing bugs and polishing the release for our hundreds of millions of users. It’s during this time that many of the bugs created from feedback reports will be addressed.

For the time being however, the Candidate release of Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 is available for early adopters to test, with the fully-fledged Beta 4 scheduled for August 23.

But even in the worst case scenario, namely if Beta 4 slips, Mozilla is still highly likely to release the next development milestone of Firefox 4.0 in the week of August 23.

Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 for Mac OS X is available for download here.

Mozilla is currently gearing up to release the fourth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0, and the browser vendor has planned additional Beta releases.

In fact, as Mozilla’s Director of Firefox noted earlier this year, multiple Betas of Firefox 4.0 will be delivered, at a rate of once every couple of week or so.

According to Laura Mesa, Firefox Product Marketing Manager, Mozilla wants to change the way in which it is referring to upcoming Firefox 4.0 Beta Builds, in order to influence the public’s perception of the development process.

“Publicly, we think it’s best to start moving away from associating a number to a particular release. As of now, we have 7 scheduled Betas, and there is a possibility that we may need to have more,” Mesa noted.

“Potentially having to call out Firefox 4 Beta 9 in tweets, blogs, videos or social media could start to make it look like we've had an inefficient development cycle, and that--as well all know--couldn't be farther from the truth,” she added.

Essentially, the change would have Mozilla no longer keeping track of Firefox 4.0 Beta releases by associating a number with each Build.